Preface
It's been weighed, it's been measured, and pretty much every feminist with brain cells has found it to be wanting. I am realizing that I shouldn't even make this post. Mostly because there is little I can say on the Twilight Saga that hasn't been said before, however I do need to vent something out as I have began to work on a supernatural-gothic tale of my own that I know is going to be seen as capitalizing on such a fanbase as Twilight.
Twilight is not, under any circumstances, "okay" in its portrayal of loving relationships, teen sexuality, or hell even its use of syntax. I could compile my own evidence for this but I really feel that Reasoning With Vampires (a blog on the not-okayness of Twilight) has much more evidence than I could ever have the time to come up with. So from this point onward in this post I am going to assume you at least glanced through her blog and see where I am coming from. Understand that I don't really care if anyone is a fan of Twilight, I only care when they start confusing Twilight's relationship(s) dynamic for healthy, or its writing as functional and not sloppy. (Much like I don't really care if someone is a nazi, but when they start beating the crap out of minorities I get extremely testy.)
***
Twilight has revolutionized a lot of things in terms of "gothic fiction" a term I am using to describe dark supernatural fiction dealing with themes of death, sexuality, and the occult. Namely, Twilight has been born into a world of masterful fiction and chose to use none of that as a real foundation for its existence. That is probably the only thing I can say is a positive for its existence. It has also in a way let down other authors, and fans to some extent, by rendering their expectations, rules, and basic mythos as false or unnecessary. In layman's terms, Twilight showed up on the scene of gothic fiction, and proceeded to laugh and poop on the works that even allowed it to exist. (Would we really have such a concrete idea in our heads if it weren't for Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, or Poppy Z. Brite?) Twilight tried its hardest to be unique--which in and of itself is no crime--but that uniqueness came at the expense of a plot, a logical world, and as something to be admired or help the next generation.
Now I have been in bookstores, and I have seen the gothic fiction that exploded after Twilight. Yet I do not think that was necessarily something that "helped" the next generation as much as give struggling authors a chance to finally break through. Gothic fiction was suddenly in, so works that had been on the outskirts of the literary sphere got pulled forward by Twilight's magnetism. Yet with the exception of 50 Shades of Grey (ughh) there has been no real building on Twilight's mythos, concepts, or ideas. To me the reason is obvious--the book was like a moldy twinkie, terrible with absolutely no substance--but I think the public hasn't quite figured it out yet as a whole. By which I mean, Twilight-impersonating fiction hasn't sold all that well as far as I know, and after the initial pop of gothic fiction as people began to read the darker and more legitimate fiction they backed off somewhat.
So what have all of these observation brought me to? I want to write gothic fiction again and actually add to the genre rather than defecate on it. My problem? The fact that no matter how I go about this mission I will ALWAYS AND FOREVER BE COMPARED TO SOMETHING I HATE. Twilight, has in simple terms, fucked over what it means to write gothic fiction. It is no longer about sexuality, death, life, occult, emotional intensities, or even religion. It's about what can sell to prepubescent girls (and the older girls and women who think like them) instead. I know it seems like I am whining, and in more ways than one I am, but this whining isn't without merit. I have submitted works to various people both professionally and personally and always comes back to Stephanie Meyers monstrosity in one way or another. Twilight has made fiction more dependent on its mass-appeal instead of its actual content, which if we were to put this into any other context we would be very worried indeed. Think if the mass-appeal of a scientific theory was more important than the evidence backing it. It's a pretty appealing idea to think that the ice caps are not indeed melting, but are instead just freezing underwater instead. Does this idea make any sense? No. Any evidence? No. Will it make people feel better for having a Hummer? Most likely.
My over all point is, what was once a semi-underground dark and challenging genre has become a get-rich-quick scheme where all one has to do is right something angsty and throw in a corny over-wrought love story into the mix. As someone who considers herself an artist (for better or worst) that gives a lot of wiggle room to bitch and complain.